Kim Reading & Thinking Notes 10/7

ENGL665: Teaching Writing with Technology

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Kim Reading & Thinking Notes 10/7

Rankins-Robertson, S., Bourelle, T., Bourelle, A. & Fisher, D. (2014). Multimodal instruction: Pedagogy and practice for enhancing multimodal composition online. Kairos, 19 (1). Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.1/praxis/robertson-et-al/index.html

I really enjoyed this web text, and felt like it touched on a lot of things I've been steeped in lately. First, of course, it connected to our discussions of digital literacy and the literacy statements we looked at extensively at the beginning of the semester. It really stressed the notion of helping students learn text, visuals, sound, etc all contribute to meaning. Another thing I really liked were how the students projects they shared were so obviously engaged in the student's life. In thinking back to the New London Group, these projects allowed students to engage their private and public lives. The audio file particularly stood out to me as an example of how an authentic intended audience can engage students so much more fully. I'm interested in service-learning in writing (though I haven't been able to establish the infrastructure yet to put anything in practice) and these projects resonated with some of the goals of engagement tied into service-learning.

I also appreciated that this piece not only touched on multimodal composition, but multimodal pedagogy to support this composition. I know the article was specifically focusing on online instruction, but it made me wonder how a video explaining an assignment might be different than going over it in class. For instance, I tend to go over assignments towards the end of a class period, and am usually fighting students' desire to pack up and leave. This article made me wonder what might be the effects of passing out a prompt and instructions students to watch a video discussing the prompt at the end of class, and then open the next class with questions based on the video. I also appreciated the concept of screencast feedback. I actually was just talking with Beth Vincellette about this the other day and she shared information that I am including here on screencast feedback:

Bishop-Clark, C. & Nelson, C.E. (2012). Engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

In these chapters on designing a study and collecting data, I feel like I have a better sense of the multiple and various ways SoTL projects can be approached. After feeling nervous about my lack of statistical knowledge in last week's reading, I was relieved to hear examples of descriptive and case study examples of SoTL. These examples seemed more recognizable and manageable, but I appreciated Bishop-Clark and Nelson's point that these types of projects don't offer insight into cause the way an experiment could. I liked the idea of a quasi-experiment and testing results based on pre- and post-tests. I am still not sure what this might look in a skills based course like composition as opposed to a content based course.

In terms of data collection, the ethical notions really stood out to me. Ideas of informed consent and IRBs are things I've heard of, but as someone whose previous research has been primarily focused on the analysis of texts, they are not things I feel confident I know much about. I appreciated the blurb on page 65 from Kelli in English about the importance of assistance in creating a SoTL project. These chapters reinforced my thought last semester that collaboration with someone familiar with social science research practices would be so beneficial to creating a successful project.

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